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Defend a Maligned Movie
I don’t believe in “guilty pleasures” – why should I feel guilt because the critical groupthink scorned something I think has merit? It’s not as if those individual critics don’t pull the shades and watch something the rest of the priesthood demeans. (Unless Marty Scorcese gave it a nod in an interview, and then it’s time for a Fresh New Look.) I also don’t believe in watching bad movies to revel in their awfulness, unless there’s some meta-level payoff. (Plan Nine really is the apotheosis of true unintended hilarity.) I’m watching something right now that makes eyes roll if you try to make the case for its importance, but that’s not important right now. (No, I’m not watching Airplane!) I’ll hand it off to you: defend a movie dismissed by the gatekeepers.
Published in General
Saw it in the theater when it first came out.
Nope.
In fact, it was a first or second date movie with a girl I had a huge thing for. She fell asleep.
She still went out with me for the better part of a year.
So I guess everyone like “Animal House”, huh?
So Miffed White Male is either Dustin Hoffman or Warren Beatty.
I like Big Trouble (not in Little China).
Speaking of Warren Beatty, Dick Tracy: its a color-coated film noir with great special effects and delightfully hammy acting. It should be better remembered.
I also like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen; I never really got the hate, the premise was good and the portrayals were entertaining.
Big Trouble in Little China is one of my favorites.
Just remember what ol’ Jack Burton does when the earth quakes, and the poison arrows fall from the sky, and the pillars of Heaven shake. Yeah, Jack Burton just looks that big ol’ storm right square in the eye and he says, “Give me your best shot, pal. I can take it.
How about Showdown In Little Tokyo? Other than the obvious body double for Tia Carrere, it’s entertaining.
Absolutely agree. Should have been a Best Picture nominee.
And it inspired an awesome Simpsons parody:
Plan 9 from Outer Space isn’t a bad movie. It’s good in ways exactly opposite of Ed Wood’s intentions, but that doesn’t make it any less entertaining. If you want to see a truly bad movie, just watch one of Wood’s unknown films. Total slogs.
If you want his masterpiece watch Glen or Glenda. It’s an avant garde headtrip. Wood throws all narrative and filmmaking conventions off a cliff, resulting in an afterschool special as envisioned by Kenneth Anger. Bela Lugosi was actually alive when they filmed this one and his scenes are something else. I’d say you need to see them to believe, but I’m not sure even that will do. I laughed harder and longer at Glen or Glenda than I have at most supposed comedies. It’s also worth noting the film was made in a time when its progressive view of crossdressing (Wood notoriously enjoyed wearing pink angora) was actually brave, and not just purported to be by every prominent public institution.
Ed Wood, the 90s biopic, is fantastic. Possibly Tim Burton’s best and sadly the last good thing he attached his name to.
I will put a good word in for Otto Preminger’s In Harm’s Way . It gets slammed for bad pacing, and for the fact that Kirk Douglas’ charming rogue character actually rapes a nurse, driving her to commit suicide, then commits suicide himself. I find that tragic element to the film entirely within the bounds of western literary canon. Then there is the reconciliation between John Wayne’s Admiral Rock Torrey and his estranged son (who also dies). It’s quite underrated.
I’m a Star Trek fan and all the other ST fans I know also love Galaxy Quest. Was sich liebt, neckt sich. If you love it, you can laugh at it.
There was no CGI when ST:TMP was made. That’s all model and backscreen projection work.
Correct. The plan was for it to be a pilot, which makes The Changeling; The Movie more understandable. Also if I recall the novelization, which was drawn from the original script, correctly, they were planning on making much more of the fact that Will Decker was Matt Decker’s son. And we got Riker and Troi, take one, with him and Ilia.
I think “The Santa Clause 2” is a very good Christmas movie – maybe even better than the first “The Santa Clause”.
Yes! I think the first Star Trek – Star Trek the Motion Picture – is one of the better Star Trek movies. “Wrath of Khan” is great, but is not that enjoyable after you see it the first time. But for me, the first Star Trek movie gets better with multiple viewings.
Yes! I think the last 30 minutes of “Battleship” is awesome – the way they took that giant old battleship out of mothballs.
Maligned and forgotten, Observe and Report (51% critic score and 37% audience score on Rottentomatoes) deserves a lot more respect for it’s dark comedic genius. At the time it was mostly regarded as the other mall cop movie. Besides also being a comedy about a stocky mall cop loser, Observe and Report couldn’t be any more different from Paul Blart. Director Jody Hill treads the same territory he explored with his debut indie hit, The Foot Fist Way (another solid movie, though better regarded). Again the movie follows a down-on-his-luck nobody with dreams of a better life. The plot adheres to the typical structure of Hollywood flicks about such characters, except Seth Rogen plays a deranged man who’s probably mentally ill and definitely dangerous. He’s not an anti-hero, he’s just a terrible person. Pitiable at best. A lot of the humor arises from the plot progressing as if we’re supposed to be sympathetic to someone the audience and the movie is aware doesn’t deserve it.
The movie also scores major points by including two Queen songs and they’re not one of the two dozen or so choices you’d expect. One is “It’s Late” one of their best tracks, and the best cut from News of the World.
It’s not a perfect film. It’s also not for everyone. That R rating is well earned.
That’s very true and I never saw it before. TMP wasn’t an off-the-lot, overseas, semi-independent production like Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It was an in-house production of studio-owned material, filmed right on the lot by experienced old pros, led by the director of The Day the Earth Stood Still nearly thirty years earlier. It wasn’t filmed in an improvised studio in an Alabama blimp hangar like the climactic scenes of CE3K; TMP’s special effects weren’t done by a bunch of twenty-five year old stoners in the San Fernando Valley, as Lucas’s were. A Star Trek film should have been an easy layup for Paramount. But they let the time slip away inefficiently and they hired Robert Abel, late, to supervise the visual effects. On paper, this wasn’t a bad idea. Abel was a respected expert who’d accomplished amazing things for TV commercials, short films, and brief scenes in longer films. But this was a production line job with more than 100 shots to complete. They should have gone with someone who’d worked on this massive organizing scale before. He fell behind. Well, so had John Dykstra on Star Wars. Abel went over budget. But then, so did Doug Trumbull on Close Encounters.
It is still remembered as one of the most last minute of edit-and-release jobs in Hollywood history. By then, they’d had to go ahead and OK composition of music before they had actual shots; then the pace of the locked-in music dictated the use of every foot of every exterior shot made of the Enterprise in space dock.
But does it have its charms? You bet.
Yeah, the uniforms are pretty dopey.
Some of these have already been mentioned, but this is a favorite topic of mine. If I were ever to win the Ricochet Movie Fight Club (Ha!), this would be my question.
Starship Troopers (70% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes; critics score: who cares?) Not my favorite Heinlein novel, but I did have the board game:
When I saw the movie in the theater, I hated it. I thought Verhoeven got it completely wrong, missing the point of the book. On further viewings, I realized that was the whole point. It’s a brilliant and subtle satire.
The Last Action Hero (47% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.) A hilarious spoof of just about every detective/cop/thriller movie with Easter eggs in almost every scene. Yes, it has a cartoon cat, and, no, the cartoon cat doesn’t work, but the rest of the film is wonderful. As the late, great Mike Royko pointed out, it’s not a film for the stupid.
Mars Attacks (54% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.) Deliberately stupid and over the top, this is the perfect comic book movie. Lately, the movie-watching public seems to have the delusion that comic books are great literature. They’re not, they’re garish and dumb, and Mars Attacks revels in it.
Pennies From Heaven (65% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.) This movie bombed partially because it had Steve Martin as the lead and people thought it was a comedy. It is, but the blackest of dark comedies imaginable, à la Brazil.
Actually, I am surprised that these films have rated so high on RT. Their reputations seem to have improved with age.
Now, let’s look at films with good reputations that are actually pretty bad. . .
At least they made more sense than all the parka-like stuff in the later movies. What, starships don’t have heat?
Ehh… the fabric might be cool. The red uniforms are terrific, with the double-breasted jackets, belted waist and epaulettes. Very classy.
Thanks. I did not know that the music had played such a role in what footage had to be used.
Just watched that a few months ago. I couldn’t disagree more. It is a terrible film.
I believe you despise the wrong waltz.
You beat me to it. I dearly love this movie. Leo McKern is perfection as Prof. Moriarty; of course, he is amazing in everything he did. He was the best Number Two in The Prisoner.
Since my first pick is taken (and thanks, by the way, for making me feel less alone) I’ll put in a plug for The Last Remake of Beau Geste. Marty Feldman co-wrote and directed it. It’s got Ann-Margret and Peter Ustinov in it. Also James Earl Jones, Henry Gibson, Terry-Thomas, Roy Kinnear, Spike Milligan, Avery Schreiber, Ted Cassidy and Ed McMahon. What’s not to love?
It just about killed off the chance of a sequel. I didn’t want another feature length treatment of a TOS episode. But the title of the next movie was Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan promised the answer to the question I had since grade school – what happens if you give a genetically superior egomaniac his very own planet?
I had no ulterior motives in asking that question.
Stop laughing.
On further reflection…
Yes, Animal House, as navyjag mentioned in #92. Also Heavy Metal, for the same reason: because some part of me never stopped being a teenage boy.
And, finally, Naked Lunch.
Digby Geste: You expect me to talk when all I could preserve is my own measly, worthless life? Too bloody right, I’ll talk! I’ll talk, I’ll talk, just try and stop me!